Rayssa Leal has opened her 2026 season the way she has opened just about every season of her senior career. The Brazilian Olympic medallist won the Sydney stop of Street League Skateboarding in February to take an early lead in the women's street standings, reinforcing her position as the defining figure in the discipline as the SLS calendar rolled into its first major event of the year.
The Sydney win is the latest in a string of statement performances by Leal at SLS events. She remains the only woman in the league's history to have scored a perfect 9 in any contest single trick, a record that cemented her status as the technical reference point for the entire women's street category. The Sydney stop confirmed that the form has carried into the new season and that the rest of the field will be chasing again in 2026.
Leal's career arc has been unusual even by the standards of skateboarding's child prodigies. She went viral at age seven for a heelflip filmed while wearing a fairy tutu, a clip that earned her the lifelong nickname "Fadinha" or "the fairy." She has gone on to win Olympic medals at both Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, multiple X Games gold medals, and was named a Louis Vuitton brand ambassador in 2025, a deal that signalled her crossover potential into the broader fashion and culture conversation.
Local favourite Chloe Covell was among the contenders in Sydney. The Australian became the youngest X Games street gold medallist at age 13 and has been one of the most consistent presences on the women's circuit since. She won Sydney's home stop in 2023 and has continued to build a reputation as the technical equal of Leal in switch skating in particular. The two have developed a rivalry that is competitive on the score sheet and warm off it.
"I feel motivated to do my best because I see her doing her best," Leal said in a recent interview about Covell. The respect runs both ways. "We stay friends the whole time," Covell said. "The public might see us as rivals, but it's not like that."
Covell's path back to peak form has not been straightforward. She has spoken openly about a broken wrist suffered at last year's Super Crown and about needing knee stitches the day before the Paris Olympics finals. She also stayed in a hotel rather than the Olympic Village in Paris because of her age at the time. Now out of school and skating full-time, Covell has set up a 2026 season that should bring her into closer contention with Leal across multiple stops.
The Sydney result also fed into a broader 2026 SLS narrative. The men's standings have been disrupted by Olympic bronze medallist Nyjah Huston's serious injury, with Huston confirmed in early January as having suffered a fractured skull and eye socket. Among the men, a wave of Japanese skaters including Yuto Horigome and emerging names have stamped their authority on the early standings.
For Leal, Sydney is the start rather than the destination. The SLS calendar will run through a series of major stops this year and culminate in a Super Crown final that will define the season's hierarchy. On current form, she is the rider every other competitor will be measuring themselves against. The fairy with a board has become the reference point for an entire generation of women's street skating, and 2026 looks set to be another year in which she sets the bar that the rest of the field tries to clear.